Historical background – the establishment of capitalist supremacy
When the
Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was
lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening
up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. The
folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in
Britain but more in Holland. Holland was the leading Western power in
the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of
profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the
Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both
economically and geopolitically.
In
this way British industrialism came to be dominated by wealthy
investors, and capitalism became the dominant economic system. This led
to a major social transformation. Britain had been essentially an
aristocratic society, dominated by landholding families. As capitalism
became dominant economically, capitalists became dominant politically.
Tax structures and import-export policies were gradually changed to
favor investors over landowners.
It
was no longer economically viable to simply maintain an estate in the
countryside: one needed to develop it, turn it to more productive use.
Victorian dramas are filled with stories of aristocratic families who
fall on hard times, and are forced to sell off their properties. For
dramatic purposes, this decline is typically attributed to a failure in
some character, a weak eldest son perhaps. But in fact the decline of
aristocracy was part of a larger social transformation brought on by the
rise of capitalism.
The
business of the capitalist is the management of capital, and this
management is generally handled through the mediation of banks and
brokerage houses. It should not be surprising that investment bankers
came to occupy the top of the hierarchy of capitalist wealth and power.
And in fact, there are a handful of banking families, including the
Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, who have come to dominate economic and
political affairs in the Western world.
Unlike
aristocrats, capitalists are not tied to a place, or to the maintenance
of a place. Capital is disloyal and mobile – it flows to where the most
growth can be found, as it flowed from Holland to Britain, then from
Britain to the USA, and most recently from everywhere to China. Just as a
copper mine might be exploited and then abandoned, so under capitalism a
whole nation can be exploited and then abandoned, as we see in the
rusting industrial areas of America and Britain.
This
detachment from place leads to a different kind of geopolitics under
capitalism, as compared to aristocracy. A king goes to war when he sees
an advantage to his nation in doing so. Historians can 'explain' the
wars of pre-capitalist days, in terms of the aggrandizement of monarchs
and nations.
A
capitalist stirs up a war in order to make profits, and in fact our
elite banking families have financed both sides of most military
conflicts since at least World War 1. Hence historians have a hard time
'explaining' World War 1 in terms of national motivations and
objectives.
In
pre-capitalist days warfare was like chess, each side trying to win.
Under capitalism warfare is more like a casino, where the players battle
it out as long as they can get credit for more chips, and the real
winner always turns out to be the house – the bankers who finance the
war and decide who will be the last man standing. Not only are wars the
most profitable of all capitalist ventures, but by choosing the winners,
and managing the reconstruction, the elite banking families are able,
over time, to tune the geopolitical configuration to suit their own
interests.
Nations
and populations are but pawns in their games. Millions die in wars,
infrastructures are destroyed, and while the world mourns, the bankers
are counting their winnings and making plans for their postwar
reconstruction investments.
From
their position of power, as the financiers of governments, the banking
elite have over time perfected their methods of control. Staying always
behind the scenes, they pull the strings controlling the media, the
political parties, the intelligence agencies, the stock markets, and the
offices of government. And perhaps their greatest lever of power is
their control over currencies. By means of their central-bank scam, they
engineer boom and bust cycles, and they print money from nothing and
then loan it at interest to governments. The power of the banking elites
is both absolute and subtle...
"Some of the biggest men in the United
States are afraid of something. They
know there is a power somewhere, so
organised, so subtle, so watchful, so
interlocked, so complete, so pervasive
that they had better not speak above
their breath when they speak in
condemnation of it."
-- President Woodrow Wilson
The end of growth – capitalists vs. capitalism
It
was always inevitable, on a finite planet, that there would be a limit
to economic growth. Industrialization has enabled us to rush headlong
toward that limit over the past two centuries. Production has become
ever more efficient, markets have become ever more global, and finally
we have reached the point where the paradigm of perpetual growth can no
longer be maintained.
Indeed,
that point was actually reached by about 1970. Since then capital has
not so much sought growth through increased production, but rather by
extracting greater returns from relatively flat production levels.
Hence globalization, which moved production to low-waged areas,
providing greater profit margins. Hence privatization, which transfers
revenue streams to investors that formerly went to national treasuries.
Hence derivative and currency markets, which create the electronic
illusion of economic growth, without actually producing anything in the
real world.
If
one studies the collapse of civilizations, one learns that
failure-to-adapt is fatal. Continuing on the path of pursuing growth
would be such a failure to adapt. And if one reads the financial pages
these days, one finds that it is full of doomsayers. We read that the
Eurozone is doomed, and Greece is just the first casualty. We read that
stimulus packages are not working, unemployment is increasing, the
dollar is in deep trouble, growth continues to stagnate, business real
estate will be the next bubble to burst, etc. It is easy to get the
impression that capitalism is failing to adapt, and that our societies
are in danger of collapsing into chaos.
Such
an impression would be partly right and partly wrong. In order to
understand the real situation we need to make a clear distinction
between the capitalist elite and capitalism itself. Capitalism is an
economic system driven by growth; the capitalist elite are the folks who
have managed to gain control of the Western world while capitalism has
operated over the past two centuries. The capitalist system is past its
sell-by date, the banking elite are well aware of that fact – and they
are adapting.
Capitalism
is a vehicle that helped bring the bankers to absolute power, but they
have no more loyalty to that system than they have to place, or to
anything or anyone else. As mentioned earlier, they think on a global
scale, with nations and populations as pawns. They define what money is
and they issue it, just like the banker in a game of Monopoly. They can
also make up a new game with a new kind of money. They have long
outgrown any need to rely on any particular economic system in order to
maintain their power. Capitalism was handy in an era of rapid growth.
For an era of non-growth, a different game is being prepared.
Thus,
capitalism has not been allowed to die a natural death. First it was
put on a life-support system, as mentioned above, with globalization,
privatization, derivative markets, etc. Then it was injected with a
euthanasia death-drug, in the form of toxic derivatives. And when the
planned collapse occurred, rather than industrial capitalism being
bailed out, the elite bankers were bailed out. It's not that the banks
were too big to fail, rather the bankers were too politically powerful
to fail. They made governments an offer they couldn't refuse.
The
outcome of the trillion-dollar bailouts was easily predictable,
although you wouldn't know that from reading the financial pages.
National budgets were already stretched, and they certainly did not have
reserves available to service the bailouts. Thus the bailouts amounted
to nothing more than the taking on of immense new debts by governments.
In order to fulfill the bailout commitments, the money would need to be
borrowed from the same financial institutions that were being bailed
out.
With
the bailouts, Western governments delivered their nations in hock to
the bankers. The governments are now in perpetual debt bondage to the
bankers. Rather than the banks going into receivership, governments are
now in receivership. Obama's cabinet and advisors are nearly all from
Wall Street; they are in the White House so they can keep close watch
over their new acquisition, the once sovereign USA. Perhaps they will
soon be presiding over its liquidation.
The
bankers are now in control of national budgets. They say what can be
funded and what can't. When it comes to financing their wars and weapons
production, no limits are set. When it comes to public services, then
we are told deficits must be held in check. The situation was expressed
very well by Brian Cowan, Ireland's government chief. In the very same
week that Ireland pledged 200 billion Euro to bailout the banks, he was
being asked why he was cutting a few million Euro off of critical
service budgets. He replied, "I'm sorry, but the funds just aren't
there". Of course they're not there! The treasury was given away. The
cupboard is bare.
As
we might expect, the highest priority for budgets is servicing the debt
to the banks. Just as most of the third world is in debt slavery to the
IMF, so the whole West is now in debt slavery to its own central banks.
Greece is the harbinger of what is to happen everywhere.
The carbon economy – controlling consumption
In
a non-growth economy, the mechanisms of production will become
relatively static. Instead of corporations competing to innovate, we'll
have production bureaucracies. They'll be semi-state, semi-private
bureaucracies, concerned about budgets and quotas rather than growth,
somewhat along the lines of the Soviet model. Such an environment is not
driven by a need for growth capital, and it does not enable a
profitable game of Monopoly.
We
can already see steps being taken to shift the corporate model towards
the bureaucratic model, through increased government intervention in
economic affairs. With the Wall Street bailouts, the forced
restructuring of General Motors, the call for centralized
micromanagement of banking and industry, and the mandating of health
insurance coverage, the government is saying that the market is to
superseded by government directives. Not that we should bemoan the
demise of exploitive capitalism, but before celebrating we need to
understand what it is being replaced with.
In
an era of capitalism and growth, the focus of the game has been on the
production side of the economy. The game was aimed at controlling the
means of growth: access to capital. The growth-engine of capitalism
created the demand for capital; the bankers controlled the supply. Taxes
were mostly based on income, again related to the production side of
the economy.
In
an era of non-growth, the focus of the game will be on the consumption
side of the economy. The game will be aimed at controlling the
necessities of life: access to food and energy. Population creates the
demand for the necessities of life; the bankers intend to control the
supply. Taxes will be mostly based on consumption, particularly of
energy. That's what the global warming scare is all about, with its
carbon taxes and carbon credits.
Already
in Britain there is talk of carbon quotas, like gasoline rationing in
wartime. It's not just that you'll pay taxes on energy, but the amount
of energy you can consume will be determined by government directive.
Carbon credits will be issued to you, which you can use for driving, for
heating, or on rare occasions for air travel. Also in Britain, the
highways are being wired so that they can track how many miles you
drive, tax you accordingly, and penalize you if you travel over your
limit. We can expect these kinds of things to spread throughout the
West, as it's the same international bankers who are in charge
everywhere.
In
terms of propaganda, this control over consumption is being sold as a
solution to global warming and peak oil. The propaganda campaign has
been very successful, and the whole environmental movement has been
captured by it. In Copenhagen, demonstrators confronted the police,
carrying signs in support of carbon taxes and carbon credits. But in
fact the carbon regime has nothing to do with climate or with
sustainability. It is all about micromanaging every aspect of our lives,
as well as every aspect of the economy.
If
the folks who are running things actually cared about sustainability,
they'd be investing in efficient mass transit, and they'd be shifting
agriculture from petroleum-intensive, water-intensive methods to
sustainable methods. Instead they are mandating biofuels and selling us
electric cars, which are no more sustainable or carbon-efficient than
standard cars. Indeed, the real purpose behind biofuels is genocide.
With food prices linked to energy prices, and agriculture land being
converted from food production to fuel production, the result can
only be a massive increase in third-world starvation. Depopulation has
long been a stated goal in elite circles, and the Rockefeller dynasty
has frequently been involved in eugenics projects of various kinds.
'The War on Terrorism' – preparing the way for the transition
The
so-called War on Terrorism has two parts. The first part is a
pretext for arbitrary abuse of citizen's rights, whenever Homeland
Security claims the action is necessary for security reasons. The second
part is a pretext for US military aggression anywhere in the world,
whenever the White House claims that Al Qaeda is active there.
I
emphasized the word 'claims' above, because the terrorism pretext is
being used to justify arbitrary powers, both domestically and globally.
No hard evidence need be presented to Congress, the UN, or anyone else,
before some nation is invaded, someone is kidnapped and tortured as a
'terrorist suspect', or some new invasive security measure is
implemented. When powers are arbitrary, then we are no longer living
under the rule of law, neither domestically nor internationally. We are
living under the rule of men, as you would expect in a dictatorship, or
in an old-fashioned kingdom or empire.
Part 1: Preparing the way for a new social order
In
a very real sense, the terrorism pretext is being used to undo
everything that The Enlightenment and the republication revolutions
achieved two centuries ago. The very heart of the Bill of Rights – due
process – has been abandoned. The gulag, the concentration camp, and the
secret arrest in the night – these we have always associated with
fascist and communist dictatorships – and now they are not only
functioning under US jurisdiction, but being justified publicly by the
President himself.
Is
there really a terrorist threat to the homeland, and would these
measures be a sensible response to such a threat? People sre strongly
divided in their answers to these questions. Quite a bit of hard
forensic evidence has come to light, including links to intelligence
agencies, and my own view is that most of the dramatic 'terrorist'
events in the US, UK, and Europe have been covert false-flag
operations.
From
an historical perspective this would not be at all surprising. Such
operations have been standard practice – modus operandi – in many
nations, though we usually don't get proof until years later. For
example, every war the US has been involved in has had its own phony
Gulf of Tonkin Incident, or its Weapons of Mass Destruction scam, in one
form or another. It's a formula that works. Instant mobilization of
public opinion, prompt passage without debate of enabling resolutions
and legislation. Why would the War on Terrorism be any different?
As
regards motive: while Muslims have only suffered as a result of these
dramatic events, our elite bankers have been able to create a
police-state infrastructure that can be used to deal with any
foreseeable popular resistance or civic chaos that might emerge as they
prepare the way for their post-capitalist future.
With
the collapse, the bailouts, and the total failure to pursue any kind of
effective recovery strategy, the signals are very clear: the system
will be allowed to collapse totally, thus clearing the ground for a
pre-architected 'solution'. Ground Zero can be seen as a metaphor, with
the capitalist economy as the Twin Towers. And the toxic derivatives
illustrate the fact that the collapse is actually a controlled
demolition.
It
seems to me inevitable, given the many signals, that martial law will
be part of the transition process, allegedly to deal with the problems
of economic collapse. Perhaps a collapse in the food-supply chain, due
to a collapse in the energy-supply chain. The US emergency responses in
New Orleans and again in Haiti give us more signals, actual test trials,
of what kind of 'emergency response' we can expect.
First
and foremost comes the security of the occupation forces. Those
suffering in the emergency are treated more like insurgents than victims
in need of help. In the case of Haiti, the US response can only be
described as an intentional genocide project. When people are pinned
under rubble in an earthquake, the first 48 hours, and 72 hours, are
absolutely critical points, as regards survival rates. When the US
military systematically blocked incoming aid for those critical hours,
turning back doctors and emergency teams, they sealed the fate of many
thousands who could have been saved.
One
can imagine many nightmare scenarios, given these various signals,
these ominous signs. World Wars 1 and 2 were nightmares that really
happened, with millions dying, and these same banking dynasties
orchestrated those scenarios and then covered their tracks. We must also
keep in mind the Shock Doctrine, where catastrophe is seen as
opportunity – when 'things can be done that otherwise could not be
accomplished'. We are still being impacted by the shock waves that were
sent out on 9/11, and again when the financial system collapsed. And the
the really big shock, the general collapse of society, is yet to come.
The ultimate version of the Shock Doctrine: 'If the collapse is total,
we can accomplish any damned thing we want to accomplish'.
I
won't venture a guess about how this transition process will play out,
but I do expect that it will be a nightmare of one description or
another. Already the growing homeless population is suffering a
nightmare, by any civilized standards. One day you're living in a home
whose value is going up, commuting to a good job, and the next thing you
know your family is out on the streets. That's a nightmare. The
transition time will be a difficult time, but it will be a transition,
it will be temporary, like a war. And like a war, it will enable social
and economic reconstruction in the aftermath.
Consider
how Japan and Germany were socially and politically transformed by the
postwar reconstruction process. Those were exercises in social
engineering, as were the preceding transformations under Mussolini and
Hitler. Although the outcomes were quite different, in each case a total
collapse / defeat was the preamble to reconstruction. A total collapse
of the capitalist economy is simply the application of a proven formula.
The second part of the formula will be some new social order, or
perhaps some old social order, or some mixture. Something appropriate to
a non-growth, command economy.
That's
part 1 of the War on Terrorism: it has enabled the creation of the
police-state infrastructures required to to deal with the collapse of
society, and to provide security for the reconstruction process.
Part 2: Preparing the way for global domination
Part
2 of the War on Terrorism is about the geopolitical dimensions of a
non-growth-based global economy. Earlier I suggested that geopolitics
was different under capitalism, than it was under sovereign monarchs.
The whole dynamic was different, and outcomes were weighed on a
different scale. Similarly, many things will change in a shift from
chaotic, growth-oriented capitalism, to a centralized, micromanaged,
economic regime.
Consider,
for example, the significance of control over oil reserves. In a growth
economy, profits were the prize, and controlling the markets and the
distribution channels amounted to holding a winning hand in the game.
The local dictators could manage things as they pleased, and take their
cut of oil revenues, as long as they honored their contracts with the
oil majors, who were happy to sell to the highest bidders.
In
a non-growth economy, where the focus is on direct control over the
supply and distributions of resources, it becomes necessary to secure,
in the military sense, the sources of petroleum, and the routes for its
distribution. It is no longer sufficient to merely profit from unbridled
operations. Securing of the sources, and directly allocating the
distribution, is the foundation for micromanaging the non-growth
economy. This applies to other critical resources as well, such as
uranium, and the rare minerals needed by the 'defense' and electronics
industries.
In
fact we are in the midst of a resource-grab war, with China and Russia
making long-term energy deals with Iran and Venezuela, China buying up
agricultural land in Africa, Washington making long-term deals for
Brazilian biofuels, and there are many other examples. In many ways
imperialism is reverting to colonial days, when direct administration
was the model, rather than the capitalist model: profiting from
corporate investments under dictators who suppress their populations.
There
is a natural reversion to the dynamics of the 'good old days of empire'
when the Great Powers of Europe focused their economic activity within
their individual spheres of influence. Everyone knows that global
resource limits are being reached, partly from population pressures, and
partly from resource-exploitation practices. For this reason alone, we
have the peaceful part of the resource-grab war.
In
Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Pakistan and Yemen, the US, with NATO
support, is playing a very non-peaceful hand in the resource-grab game.
It's the hand of a bully, 'I have the biggest gun, so I'll take what I
want'. These aggressive actions are very provocative to Russia and
China, and threatening to their vital economic interests. An attack on
Iran would be more than a provocation, it would be a direct slap in the
face, a challenge: 'Fight now or resign yourself to being subdued
piecemeal'.
In
addition to all this petroleum grabbing, the US has been surrounding
Russia and China with military bases, and has recently accelerated the
installations of anti-missile systems on their borders, over the strong
objections of Russia and China. The US is being intentionally
provocative, and it is threatening vital interests of these potential
adversaries.
Alliances
are being formed in response, on a bilateral basis, and in the form of
the SCO. China and Russia are very close in their military cooperation,
and technology sharing. Their strategic planning is based on the
expectation of a US attack, and their strategic response is based on the
principle of asymmetric warfare. For example, a million dollar missile
capable of taking out a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier. Or
perhaps a handful of missiles capable of disabling the Pentagon's
command-and-control satellite systems.
Meanwhile
the US is spending astronomical sums developing a first-strike
capability, with space-based weapons systems, control-of-theater
capability, forward-based 'tactical' nukes, etc. The new anti-missile
systems are an important part of a first-strike strategy, reducing the
ability of Russia or China to retaliate. These systems are more than
just provocative. They are the modern equivalent of marching your armies
up to your adversary's border.
If
there is a nuclear exchange between the major powers, historians will
cite all of these things I've mentioned as 'obvious signs' that war was
coming. Parallels would be drawn to the pre-World War 1 scenario, when
Germany was eclipsing Britain economically, as China is eclipsing the US
now. In both cases a 'desperate attempt to maintain hegemony' would be
seen as the cause of the war.
There
may or may not be a World War 3, but all of these preparations make it
clear that our banking elite intend to preside over a global system, by
hook or by crook. If they wanted a peaceful arrangement, a splitting of
the third-world pie, so to speak, it could be easily arranged at any
time, along with substantial nuclear disarmament. China and Russia would
like to see a stable, multi-polar world; it is only our elite bankers
who are obsessed with world domination.
It
is possible that nuclear war is a 'desired outcome', accomplishing
depopulation, and making the collapse even more total. Or perhaps China
and Russia will be given an offer they can't refuse: 'Surrender your
economic sovereignty to our global system, or face the consequences'.
One
way or another, the elite bankers, the masters of the universe, intend
to preside over a micromanaged global system. The collapse project is
now well underway, and the 'surround your enemy' project seems to be
more or less completed. From a strategic perspective, there will be some
trigger point, some stage in the economic collapse scenario, when
geopolitical confrontation is judged to be most advantageous. It's a
multi-dimensional chess board, and with the stakes so high, you can rest
assured that the timing of the various moves will be carefully
coordinated. And from the overall shape of the board, we seem to be
nearing the endgame.
Prognosis 2012 – a Neo Dark Age
2012
might not be the exact year, but it's difficult to see the endgame
lasting much beyond that, and the masters of the universe love
symbolism, as with 911 (both in Chile and in Manhattan), KLA 007, and
others. 2012 is loaded with symbolism, eg. the Mayan Calendar, and the
Internet is buzzing with various 2012-related prophecies, survival
strategies, anticipated alien interventions, alignments with galactic
radiation fields, etc. And then there is the Hollywood film, 2012, which
explicitly portrays the demise of most of humanity, and the pre-planned
salvation of a select few. One never knows with Hollywood productions,
what is escapist fantasy, and what is aimed at preparing the public mind
symbolically for what is to come.
Whatever
the exact date, all the threads will come together, geopolitically and
domestically, and the world will change. It will be a new era, just as
capitalism was a new era after aristocracy, and the Dark Ages followed
the era of the Roman Empire. Each era has its own structure, its own
economics, its own social forms, and its own mythology. These things
must relate to one another coherently, and their nature follows from the
fundamental power relationships and economic circumstances of the
system.
In
our post-2012 world, we have for the first time one centralized global
government, and one ruling elite clique, a kind of extended royal
family, the lords of finance. As we can see with the IMF, WHO, and the
WTO, and the other pieces of the embryonic world government, the
institutions of governance will make no pretensions about popular
representation or democratic responsiveness. Rule will be by means of
autocratic global bureaucracies, who take their marching orders from the
royal family. This model has already been operating for some time,
within its various spheres of influence, as with the restructuring
programs forced on the third world, as a condition for getting
financing.
Whenever
there is a change of era, the previous era is always demonized in
mythology. In the Garden of Eden story the serpent is demonized – a
revered symbol in paganism, the predecessor to Christianity. When
republics came along, the demonization of monarchs was an important
part of the process. In the post-2012 world, democracy and national
sovereignty will be demonized. This will be very important, in getting
people to accept totalitarian rule, and the mythology will contain much
that is true...
In
those terrible dark days, before the blessed unification of humanity,
anarchy reigned in the world. One nation would attack another, no better
than predators in the wild. Nations had no coherent policies; voters
would swing from one party to another, keeping governments always in
transition and confusion. How did they ever think that masses of
semi-educated people could govern themselves, and run a complex society?
Democracy was an ill-conceived experiment that led only to corruption
and chaotic governance. How lucky we are to be in this well-ordered
world, where humanity has finally grown up, and those with the best
expertise make the decisions.
The
economics of non-growth are radically different than capitalist
economics. The unit of exchange is likely to be a carbon credit,
entitling you to consume the equivalent of one kilogram of fuel.
Everything will have a carbon value, allegedly based on how much energy
it took to produce it and transport it to market. 'Green consciousness'
will be a primary ethic, conditioned early into children. Getting by
with less is a virtue; using energy is anti-social; austerity is a
responsible and necessary condition.
As
with every currency, the bankers will want to manage the scarcity of
carbon credits, and that's where global warming alarmism becomes
important. Regardless of the availability of resources, carbon credits
can be kept arbitrarily scarce simply by setting carbon budgets, based
on directives from the IPCC, another of our emerging units of global
bureaucratic governance. Such IPCC directives will be the equivalent of
the Federal Reserve announcing a change in interest rates. Those budgets
set the scale of economic activity.
Presumably
nations will continue to exist, as official units of governance.
However security and policing will be largely centralized and
privatized. Like the Roman Legions, the security apparatus will be loyal
to the center of empire, not to the place where someone happens to be
stationed. We have seen this trend already in the US, as mercenaries
have become big business, and police forces are increasingly
federalized, militarized, and alienated from the general public.
Just
as airports have now been federalized, all transport systems will be
under the jurisdiction of the security apparatus. Terrorism will
continue as an ongoing bogey-man, justifying whatever security
procedures are deemed desirable for social-control purposes. The whole
security apparatus will have a monolithic quality to it, a similarity of
character regardless of the specific security tasks or location.
Everyone dressed in the same Evil Empire black outfits, with big
florescent letters on the back of their flack jackets. In essence, the
security apparatus will be an occupying army, the emperor's garrison in
the provinces.
On
a daily basis, you will need to go through checkpoints of various
kinds, with varying levels of security requirements. This is where
biometrics becomes important. If people can be implanted with chips,
then much of the security can be automated, and everyone can be tracked
at at all times, and their past activity retrieved. The chip links into
your credit balance, so you've got all your currency always with you,
along with your medical records and lots else that you don't know
about.
There
is very little left as regards national sovereignty. Nothing much in
the way of foreign policy will have any meaning. With security marching
to its own law and its distant drummer, the main role of so-called
'government' will be to allocate and administer the carbon-credit budget
that it receives from the IPCC. The IPCC decides how much wealth a
nation will receive in a given year, and the government then decides how
to distribute that wealth in the form of public services and
entitlements. Wealth being measured by the entitlement to expend energy.
In
a fundamental sense, this is how things already are, following the
collapse and the bailouts. Because governments are so deeply in debt,
the bankers are able to dictate the terms of national budgets, as a
condition of keeping credit lines open. The carbon economy, with its
centrally determined budgets, provides a much simpler and more direct
way of micromanaging economic activity and resource distribution
throughout the globe.
In
order to clear the way for the carbon-credit economy, it will be
necessary for Western currencies to collapse, to become worthless, as
nations become increasingly insolvent, and the global financial system
continues to be systematically dismantled. The carbon currency will be
introduced as an enlightened, progressive 'solution' to the crisis, a
currency linked to something real, and to sustainability. The old
monetary system will be demonized, and again the mythology will contain
much that is true...
The
pursuit of money is the root of all evil, and the capitalist system was
inherently evil. It encouraged greed, and consumption, and it cared
nothing about wasting resources. People thought the more money they had,
the better off they were. How much wiser we are now, to live within our
means, and to understand that a credit is a token of stewardship.
Culturally,
the post-capitalist era will be a bit like the medieval era, with
aristocrats and lords on top, and the rest peasants and serfs. A
definite upper class and lower class. Just as only the old upper class
had horses and carriages, only the new upper class will be entitled to
access substantial carbon credits. Wealth will be measured by
entitlements, more than by acquisitions or earnings. Those outside the
bureaucratic hierarchies are the serfs, with subsistence entitlements.
Within the bureaucracies, entitlements are related to rank in the
hierarchy. Those who operate in the central global institutions are
lords of empire, with unlimited access to credits.
But
there is no sequestering of wealth, or building of economic empires,
outside the structures of the designated bureaucracies. Entitlements are
about access to resources and facilities, to be used or not used, but
not to be saved and used as capital. The flow of entitlements comes
downward, micromanaged from the top. It's a dole economy, at all levels,
for people and governments alike – the global regimentation of
consumption. As regards regimentation, the post-capitalist culture will
also be a bit like the Soviet system. Here's your entitlement card,
here's your job assignment, and here's where you'll be living.
With
the pervasive security apparatus, and the micromanagement of economic
activity, the scenario is clearly about fine-grained social control,
according to centralized guidelines and directives. Presumably media
will be carefully programmed, with escapist trivia, and a sophisticated
version of 1984-style groupthink propaganda pseudo-news, which is pretty
much what we already have today. The non-commercial Internet, if there
is one, will be limited to monitored, officially-designated chat sites,
and other kinds of sanitized forums.
With
such a focus on social micromanagement, I do not expect the family unit
to survive in the new era, and I expect child-abuse alarmism will be
the lever used to destabilize the family. The stage has been set with
all the revelations about church and institutional child sexual abuse.
Such revelations could have been uncovered any time in the past century,
but they came out at a certain time, just as all these other
transitional things have been happening. People are now aware that
widespread child abuse happens, and they have been conditioned to
support strong measures to prevent it.
Whenever
I turn on the TV, I see at least one public-service ad, with shocking
images, about children who are physically or sexually abused, or
criminally neglected, in their homes, and there's a hotline phone number
that children can call. It is easy to see how the category of abuse can
be expanded, to include parents who don't follow vaccination schedules,
whose purchase records don't indicate healthy diets, who have dubious
psychological profiles, etc. The state of poverty could be deemed
abusive neglect.
With
the right media presentation, abuse alarmism would be easy to stir up.
Ultimately, a 'child rights' movement becomes an anti-family movement.
The state must directly protect the child from birth. The family is
demonized...
How
scary were the old days, when unlicensed, untrained couples had total
control over vulnerable children, behind closed doors, with whatever
neuroses, addictions, or perversions the parents happened to possess.
How did this vestige of patriarchal slavery, this safe-house den of
abuse, continue so long to exist, and not be recognized for what it was?
How much better off we are now, with children being raised
scientifically, by trained staff, where they are taught healthy values.
Ever
since public education was introduced, the state and the family have
competed to control childhood conditioning. In religious families, the
church has made its own contribution to conditioning. In the
micromanaged post-capitalist future, with its Shock Doctrine birth
scenario, it would make good sense to take that opportunity to implement
the 'final solution' of social control, which is for the state to
monopolize child raising. This would eliminate from society the
parent-child bond, and hence family-related bonds in general. No longer
is there a concept of relatives. There's just worker bees, security
bees, and queen bees, who dole out the honey.
Postscript
This
has been an extensive and somewhat detailed prognosis, regarding the
architecture of the post-capitalist regime, and the transition process
required to bring it about. The term 'new world order' is too weak a
term to characterize the radical nature of the social transformation
anticipated in the prognosis. A more apt characterization would be a
'quantum leap in the domestication of the human species'. Micromanaged
lives and microprogrammed beliefs and thoughts. A once wild primate
species transformed into something resembling more a bee or ant culture.
Needless to say, regular use of psychotropic drugs would be mandated,
so that people could cope emotionally with such a sterile, inhuman
environment.
For
such a profound transformation to be possible, it is easy to see that a
very great shock is required, on the scale of collapse and social
chaos, and possibly on the scale of a nuclear exchange. There needs to
be an implicit mandate to 'do whatever is necessary to get society
running again'. The shock needs to leave people in a condition of total
helplessness comparable to the survivors in the bombed-out rubble of
Germany and Japan after World War 2. Nothing less will do.
The
accuracy of the prognosis, as prediction, is of course impossible to
know in advance. However each part of the prognosis has been based on
precedents that have been set, modus operandi that has been observed,
trends that have been initiated, sentiments that have been expressed,
signals that have been given, and actions that have been taken whose
consequences can be confidently predicted.
In
addition, in looking at all of these indicators together, one sees a
certain mindset, an absolutist determination to implement the 'ideal
solution', without compromise, using extreme means, and with unbridled
audacity. World wars have been rehearsals for this historic moment. The
police state infrastructure is in place and has been tested. The economy
is in the process of collapse. The enemy is surrounded with missiles.
Arbitrary powers have been assumed. If not now, the ultimate prize, then
when will there be a better opportunity?
Our
elite planners are backed up by competent think tanks, and they know
that the new society must have coherence of various kinds. They've had
quite a bit of experience with social engineering, nurturing the rise of
fascism, and then engineering the postwar regimes. They understand the
importance of mythology.
For
example there is the mythology of the holocaust, where the story is all
about extermination per se, and the story is not told of the primary
mission of the concentration camps, which was to provide slave labor for
war production. And some of the companies using the slave labor were
American owned, and were supplying the German war machine. Thus does
mythology, though containing truth, succeed in hiding the tracks and the
crimes of elite perps, leaving others to carry the whole burden of
historical demonization.
So
I think there is a sound basis for anticipating the kinds of mythology
that would be designed for leaving behind and rejecting the old ways,
and seeing the new as a salvation. There is a long historical precedent
of era changes linked with mythology changes, often expressed in
religious terms. There will be a familiar ring to the new mythology, a
remixing and re-prioritizing of familiar values and assumptions, so as
to resonate with the dynamics of the new regime.
The
nature of the carbon economy has been somewhat clearly signaled. Carbon
budgets, and carbon credits, are clearly destined to become primary
components of the economy. As we've seen with the elite and grassroots
supported global warming movement, the arbitrary scarcity of carbon
credits can be easily regulated on the pretext of environmentalism. And
peak oil alarmism is always available as a backup. As elite spokespeople
have often expressed, when the time comes, the masses will demand the
new world order.
The
focus on control over consumption, resources, and distribution is
implicit in the emphasis on energy limits, is latent in the geopolitical
situation, as regards depletion of global resources, and is indicated
by the need for a new unifying paradigm, as the growth paradigm is no
longer viable.
The
nature of the security apparatus has been clearly signaled by the
responses to demonstrations ever since 1998 in Seattle, by the increased
use of hardened-killer mercenaries at home and abroad, by excessive and
abusive police behavior, by airport security procedures, by Guantanamo
and renditions, by the creation of a domestic branch of the army,
dedicated to responding to civil emergencies, and by the way Katrina and
Haiti have been handled.
It
would be a major mistake to think of those last two as bungled
operations. They were exercises in collapse management of a certain
kind, to be applied to certain populations, where the training and
equipment appropriate for combat in Afghanistan is seen as being
appropriate for administering aid to civilian disaster victims. These
selected disaster victims will be seen primarily as threats to civil
order, or perhaps undesirables to be incarcerated or eliminated. They
will be demonized as rioters and looters. Assistance will comes later,
if at all. And it can all be broadcast on TV, and somehow be seen as the
way things have to be. These two exercises were not bungled at all.
They were alarmingly successful, most notably in the case of the
realtime PR mythology.
The
limited role of national governments, being primarily allocators of
mandated budgets, has been clearly signaled by long-standing IMF
policies in the third world, and by the way the bankers have been
dictating to governments, in the wake of the over-extended bailout
commitments. The carbon entitlement budgeting paradigm accomplishes the
same micromanagement in a much more direct way, and is the natural
outcome of the push toward hard carbon limits.
